Britain's appetite for buying movies makes it a lively laboratory for Hollywood's marketing experiments. One of these is the "triple play" bundling of a Blu-Ray disc, regular DVD and digital file in the same package - a practice now standard here. Unfortunately, however, we won't be at the forefront of UltraViolet just yet, …

Maybe it's a price thing?

Price

Someone said €35 euros for a blu ray thats just not true, not anymore but perhaps people just don't know, at its most expensive online it is now only €20.

Digital copy online for something I have bought is something I WANT as a consumer, I want to be able to buy my discs, register them then put them in the attic. The end game for me is no disks and everything streaming, but until the entire market has the broadband I have I am willing to accept that's a way off

Triple Play = Triple Fail

Personally, I hate this Triple Play idea. If I wanted a DVD version I'd buy the DVD version on its own. The Triple Play simply allows them to pump up the price over and above what you'd pay for a Blu-Ray version alone.

Except they don't.

Triple-Play packs are often no more expensive than BD-only packs. And if they are a few quid more, so what? Find a friend who doesn't have a BD player and get him to kick in a fiver. You get your BD for the cost of a DVD, he gets his DVD for half price, and you both win.

Despite a peso:pound rate worse than 6:1, most people I know in Argentina do the same as me - buy from amazon UK. Even HMV's online store plus postage is by far cheaper than anywhere here. I wonder if that shows up as a UK sale? Z shops post here too now, the postage is often 3 times the cost of the product but a total spend per item is about a tenth of a local shop.

Incidentally, I just bought two triple play BRs from Amazon, in both cases they were cheaper than the BR-only from the same site.

Not the exchange rate

Its the tax free shopping - all the UK Disks from play.com etc are shipped from the channel islands tax free. So we get a slightly better deal on the disks but the tax man gets nothing and our shops close down because they can't compete.

There also seems to be a bit of gouging in Europe too - I know that PC games cost double in the EU - and that can't be down to exchange rates or taxes!

Nothing

You could just give the DVD to one person, the code to another and keep the Blu Ray yourself. I expect the DVD is emblazoned with a "not to be sold separately" text and a warning when you play it. I also expect that once you redeem your download it is tied to the one account / service and is non transferrable.

Personally I consider digital downloads to be a pox on humanity. I do not understand who is shortsighted or dumb enough to buy audio / video which tied to one kind of device from one manufacturer. Even worse if the download is "free" with the disk but is actually only there to weakly justify the price disparity between the DVD and Blu Ray copy.

DRM

The fact is that DRM is an issue but we should be able to register and deregister our devices, we have bought content, and a dvd or bluray plays on every format that has one of those drives. We should NOT be made to lock our copies to say ITUNES or WINDOWS or PS3.

I should be able to register my devices and play all content on all, maybe not at the same time, I'd not mind paying a LITTLE extra for multiple play capability (playing 1 movie on 2 different devices at the same time), but the current trend of saying ITUNES or WINDOWS means that people will avoid online digital stuff and just continue to torrent and newsgroup everything.

Common its not hard, let us play the film on any device and stop milking us for everything, there are more revenue streams you are missing

UltraViolet ultra tedious?

The UK may not be missing much: it seems that a lot of hoop traversal is required before one can actually get hold of a something that is only a standard-resolution, application-specific, version of the HD content you paid for: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/11/your-movie-on-every-platform-sort-of-for-a-while-how-the-new-ultraviolet-drm-fails.ars

And the sad part

Anyone can rip a DVD with a PC and Handbrake. It's straightforward and delivers a copy of the movie without any stupid restrictions. Ripping HD content is slightly more difficult, requiring a commercial tool, a more powerful CPU and deftness with some hairy options in MeGUI but it's not an insurmountable either.

Given the fact I've I bought a movie on DVD and can rip it, why don't they just hand out an MP4. Why bother with all this DRM crap? They may as well hand out an un-DRMd copy. They could still protect it with watermarking, e.g. a user must register on the site, must register a phone, type the SMS they receive on their phone and then they can grab their MP4. The registration process would mean in most cases the identity of the person is reasonably well known which along with watermarking would keep people honest.

i like the triple play stuff, it means I can keep the blu ray downstairs and the kids can take the dvd upstairs, fuck it up, draw on it whatever, and I still have a copy

for an extra quid of two, its definately worth it

its totally believable that we buy more BD's per head in the UK, i've always preferred a shelf full of actual things rather than files on a pc, and most people i know are the same, only resorting to shadier methods if something is ludicriously hard / needlessly expensive to get hold of (eg disney blu rays were £30-£35 EACH in HMV a year or two ago...and they wonder why most of their shops are in the shit financially)

The digital copies on triple play discs are useless. You are better off just ripping the DVD and making a portable version yourself in your chosen format.

As for the movie industry rewarding its customers? don't be silly. They have a proven track record of milking genuine customers. They want you to buy multiple copies of the same film so they've got no wish to offer Brits a "buy once watch forever" service.

I was surprised to hear Bluray sales are increasing. According to the movie industry they went bust back in the days of VHS.

I remember one company had a promising-sounding technique for doing a combined BluRay/DVD disc - the BluRay layer is closer to the surface than the DVD one, and is transparent enough to the wavelength of light DVD uses that either layer will work properly. I can imagine studios jumping at that - particularly if it's cheaper than, or just the same price as, separate DVD and BluRay discs, because of exactly the cost-sharing Jedit mentions: with a combined disc, you can't both end up with a copy, all you can do is share a single physical item between you. (No doubt they'd stop that as well, if they could!)

Combined packs seem popular with the publishers now, though: I've just ordered a pair of CDs for my brother's birthday, both of which come in a "deluxe edition" with a DVD as well as the CD. The CD+DVD's suspiciously cheap compared to the CD on its own...

Back in the 'owd days....

I'll be buggered if they think im buying the same stuff again with a sharpening filter applied.

It wont be long before you buy a memory card with content on, the card wont be locked to the product and your device will have a reader built in. Insert card, watch/listen at will.

Place card in other device, watch/listen at will. Copying the card will fail as it will have protection. That will last (with the best DRM) no longer than 12months before its broken. Then a new file sharing system will be available and we are all back to square one.